


wounds are all we're made of

by flowersforgraves



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Blood, Knifeplay, M/M, Non-Sexual Kink, Painplay, Scarification, Trust Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:46:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23942554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersforgraves/pseuds/flowersforgraves
Summary: Title fromhere.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	wounds are all we're made of

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlingargents](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/gifts).



> Title from [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGKNaIXtBZQ)

Neil breathes in. The knife moves down. Andrew breathes in. The knife moves down.

He barely breaks the skin before Andrew grabs his wrist. “Wait.” Andrew’s eyes are wide, and if Neil wasn’t close enough to kiss he wouldn’t have noticed how shaky Andrew’s breath is. 

“No?” Neil asks, carefully.

Andrew shakes his head vigorously. “ _Yes_.”

Neil breathes out. The knife moves down. Andrew slowly loosens his grip on Neil’s wrist, but not before Neil lets the metal make contact with Andrew’s skin. As soon as it does, Andrew’s hand falls away like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and Neil focuses in on nothing but Andrew and the knife.

The weight of the knife on Andrew’s collarbone dimples the skin below the blade’s tip. It’s not so sharp that it’ll cut like butter, which is vaguely irritating to Neil, but this is what Andrew’d asked for. His eyes flick up to meet Andrew’s, checking once more for any hesitation.

“Do it,” Andrew rasps.

Neil cuts him. Neil cuts him, and the saturated red of the blood on the pale of Andrew’s skin almost makes him cry out. Neil cuts him, and both of them let out a breath. Neil cuts him, and Andrew shudders as Neil lifts the knife and demands, “Again.”

Neil nods, and moves an inch to the left to make a second cut. He doesn’t hesitate this time; Andrew knows what he’s asking for and there’s nothing Neil could -- or would -- do to stop him. This one is deeper, because Neil knows how to do this. Neil knows how to use a knife because the Butcher of Baltimore’s son needs to know these kinds of details. He knows how deep to cut to cause pain, knows how shallow to stay to avoid serious injury. 

He would much rather use what his father gave him for pleasure than business.

Andrew lets out another shuddering breath. “Again,” he orders.

Neil moves the tip of the knife down, drags a light scratch across Andrew’s chest. He makes two slashes this time, swift and sure, directly over Andrew’s heart. “Where else?” he asks, in a low voice colored with satisfaction.

“Deeper. There again, but deeper,” Andrew says, and because Neil knows what that’s like, he does. “Mark me. I want scars, Neil.” Andrew’s voice is louder now, stronger, and Neil --

Despite his earlier misgivings, Neil likes to say yes to Andrew, and so he _cuts_ \--

Blood covers the knife. Blood covers the knife and stains Neil’s fingertips and Andrew is bleeding, and Neil puts compression on the wound almost without thinking. His other hand still holds the knife, and he brings it to his lips. 

The salt and iron taste of blood is familiar. Neil’s been in fist fights, been battered on the court, been goddamn tortured. This is better, different somehow, because it's Andrew's blood and Neil'd inflicted the wounds, and Andrew wanted -- wants -- that pain. This is ruby proof of Andrew's trust, liquid commitment and coppery love, and Neil licks the blood from the knife slowly.

Andrew looks up at him, eyes half closed and mouth slightly open.

“What?” Neil asks, voice hoarse as he breaks the silence.

Andrew shakes his head slowly. Neil frowns, and then the warmth of Andrew’s blood on his palm spreads past skin-deep. 

Neil leans into it and keeps pressure constant, reaching over to the other side of the bed for the towel he had brought in preparation. Andrew’s blood blooms in a crimson stain across the pale yellow of the towel, and if Neil put any stock in Rorschach tests -- or romance, for that matter -- he’d swear up and down that it forms a heart. 

Andrew grabs Neil’s wrist again. This time he’s not stopping Neil from doing anything; rather, he’s seeking grounding contact. Andrew’s grip is lighter than it was before, and maybe it’s Neil’s imagination, and maybe it’s that this isn’t as important, and maybe it’s blood loss, so Neil asks, “Do you want me to cauterize it?”

“No,” Andrew says, sharp despite his half-lidded eyes. “Don’t do anything. Bandaids are fine, but I want it to scar. From the knife. From you.”

“Pipe dream,” Neil mutters, but retreats to get more gauze.

When he returns from the bathroom fifteen seconds later, Andrew is sitting up and the towel is on the floor. “Hurry up. Your turn in a second,” he says. Neil’s skeptical of Andrew’s knife skills right now, but he _trusts_ Andrew, so much that it scares him. So instead of protesting, he presses pads of gauze over Andrew’s heart until the blood stops soaking through immediately.

“Why the knife?” Neil asks, as he wraps up the wounds he inflicted.

He feels more than sees Andrew’s shrug. “That’s what I wanted,” Andrew replies. “No burn scars. Just knife cuts.”

Neil accepts the non-explanation quietly, and hands Andrew the knife. “Do you want to clean it, or should I?”

“Does it matter?” Andrew’s teeth glitter in a brief smile, the light from the window striking his face at the perfect angle. “It’ll just get dirty again.”

Neil thinks about blood-borne illness and says, “I’ll rinse it off first.” He takes it back from Andrew, who lets him have it easily. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Andrew lean against the headboard as soon as the knife is out of his hands, and concludes that despite everything, showing weakness is still beyond where he and Andrew are at right now. 

He fills a paper cup to the brim and leaves the knife in the sink, water cascading over the blade in rivulets as the pink-tinted residue drains into the sewer. Andrew straightens back up as soon as Neil comes back, and Neil heads straight to the bed.

“Sit down,” he tells Andrew.

Andrew raises an eyebrow, but takes a seat. “Are you having another stupid idea?” he asks.

“No,” Neil says. “I don’t want you to fall over in the middle of scarring me. Replace the blood volume first.” He hands Andrew the cup, and stares unblinkingly until Andrew raises it to his lips.

Andrew has plenty of experience drinking fast, so he drains the cup almost faster than Neil can realize he’s not protesting. Obviously, Andrew isn’t stupid, but he can be stubborn as hell, and Neil was expecting this to be one of those times. But thinking about it, Andrew wants to leave scars, not kill Neil, and if his hand slips involuntarily it could very well happen.

Retrieving the knife takes half as long now that Neil’s not carrying a cup of water ready for spilling. His hands are steady as he passes it to Andrew, and remain so as he strips off his shirt and lays face down on the bed.

“Turn over,” Andrew says.

“Why?” Neil asks, almost reflexively. But he does so even before Andrew answers, because he trusts Andrew and there’s no other answer. 

Andrew smiles, and this time it’s predatory. “I want to watch you when I cut into you.”

Neil snorts. “Typical,” he says, but some of the tension bleeds out of his shoulders as he spreads his arms to let Andrew look him over.

The predatory nature of Andrew’s smile _sharpens_ , somehow, and as his gaze rakes over Neil’s bare chest -- already scarred, from various sources that all lead back to his father -- Neil feels like Andrew is about to pluck out his heart and eat it. 

And that’s fine. That’s fine because he belongs to Andrew right now, and Andrew has promised to keep him safe, and he knows in his heart of hearts that Andrew would die before letting anyone else tear Neil limb from limb. His eyes close, just for a moment, and then Andrew lays the cold, wet metal of the blade on Neil’s shoulder. His eyes fly open at that, the abrupt sensation of something that’s not quite discomfort, and Andrew makes slow, deliberate eye contact. 

“Yes or no?” Andrew asks.

“Yes,” Neil breathes, and he doesn’t see Andrew pick the knife up, but he sure as hell feels it when the edge bites into his skin.

The pain is pleasurable, warm and twisting into Neil’s bones. Compared to the last time he was under a knife, this is positively euphoric. He can feel Andrew drag the knife across his skin, lightly enough that it won’t cut, and then he can feel the change in pressure so that the skin splits beneath the blade. 

He lets out a long breath he didn’t realize he’d kept in his lungs. “Keep going,” he says, voice so hoarse it’s almost a whisper. “More.” He’d understood why Andrew wanted this, intellectually, but it’s not until now that he _gets_ it, burning in the pit of his stomach and flowing through his veins. “Do it again, Andrew.”

Andrew’s teeth gleam in the light again as he straddles Neil, and Neil has to stop himself from reaching for Andrew. Instead he clenches his fists at his sides, bunching up the fabric of his sweatpants. The knife descends again, and another burst of pain fills Neil. This time he can feel the blood warm on his skin, and Andrew traces the lines of his collarbone and sternum with the point of the knife. 

“I’m going to do it again,” Andrew says, and it’s not a question and that’s fine too, because Neil would have said yes if it was and asked for it if Andrew had said nothing at all. This time it’s directly over Neil’s heart, a twin to the double slashes Neil had made using the same knife not ten minutes ago. Neil can’t help but tense against it, but he relaxes into the pain as soon as Andrew pulls the knife away. 

He isn’t sure if he says, “Lick it,” or if he just thinks it, but either way Andrew’s tongue swipes up the blade of the knife once, twice, and Neil smiles with his whole face.

“I would have been fine,” Andrew says. He presses hard on the wound with his palm while he grabs a towel, again mirroring Neil’s movements from when their positions had been reversed. 

“What?” Neil asks, because his brain is slow and stupid. Whether it’s from blood loss or endorphins he doesn’t know, doesn’t care, but he still feels safe under Andrew’s hands. 

“Without water.” It doesn’t explain much, but Neil is just happy to hear Andrew’s voice. “To replace the blood volume.” He’s looking down at Neil, deadpan, and Neil forgets, momentarily, that Andrew is stopping the flow of blood from his heart. 

“Precautions,” Neil says, blinking up at Andrew.

“Seemed like a good idea at the time?” Andrew is infuriatingly composed, and then he is infuriatingly _gone_ , and Neil sits up to keep sight of him as he disappears into the bathroom. 

The gauze pads seem inadequate, but Andrew tapes them firmly in place nonetheless. He’s discarded the knife -- as Neil’s world starts to expand from just Andrew, he hears the familiar noise of the faucet running, and turns his head to lick the blood from Andrew’s fingers, coming up to cup his jaw for a kiss.

Andrew laughs, loud and sudden, and Neil almost bites him out of sheer surprise. Bloody fingerprints stain Andrew’s face, from Neil’s hands earlier, and Neil lets Andrew paint matching ones on his face with the other hand. They’ll wash the marks off later, probably in an hour, and dried blood will wash down the drain, turning the water rusty, and the impermanence will be nullified by the scars they’ve left on each other’s chests today.

Neil stretches upward and kisses Andrew, and he doesn’t know whose blood they’re tasting, and that’s fine. It’s all fine, because the pain that pulses with every heartbeat comes from scars that mark him and Andrew as survivors, as comrades, bind them as one. These come from trust, not fear, and Neil’s more than happy to remind himself of how Andrew allows him in.

It’s all fine.


End file.
